Murder trial restarts after mistrial over ethnic comments

A murder trial that was halted last week due to an assistant prosecutor’s ethnic references about the defendant restarted Tuesday with rules to ensure no more potentially prejudicial comments are made.

Jury selection began in the case of Viktor Shaholli, 64, who is charged with first-degree murder for the 2011 shooting death of Dashamir Matjani, 29, his daughter-in-law’s brother, in a St. Clair Shores home.

Judge Mary Chrzanowski ordered a mistrial last week in response to complaints by defense attorney Tim Barkovic that Assistant Macomb County Prosecutor Steven Fox frequently referred to Shaholli’s Albanian ethnicity. Fox asked prospective jurors if they are biased against Albanian people and mentioned Shaholli’s heritage in his opening statements.

Chrzanowski said Fox did not intend to prejudice jurors.

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For this week’s proceedings, the judge said that Shaholli’s ethnicity doesn’t have to be kept a secret but not used in a prejudicial way. Shaholli, who is here on a green card, is using an Albanian language interpreter.

Barkovic also complained about Fox’s use of “compound” in reference to the home where Shaholli lived with other family members, including his son, daughter-in-law and their two children.

Chrzanowski ruled that Shaholli’s home cannot be referred to as a compound or “commune,” nor his style of living as “communal,” which Fox used in his opening statements.

She also banned references to Shaholli’s Muslim religion. Fox used the word “jihad” in his opening comments, although he did not directly connect it to Shaholli.

In a related matter, Chrzanowski continued her ruling from the first trial to allow Shaholli to celebrate the Muslim holy month, Ramadan, which ends July 28. She said he could take breaks from the trial to pray, and she would order the jail to provide his special diet for the period.

Fox says Shaholli, the family patriarch, shot Matjani out of anger at his daughter-in-law, Ermira Shaholli. Fox alleges Shaholli was angry that she and his son and children were moving out of his house on Hoffman Street in St. Clair Shores to a house on Recreation Street, also in the Shores. Matjani was helping renovate the Recreation home in November 2011 when Shaholli entered, shot him in the chest with a shotgun and fled. He later that day turned himself in to St. Clair Shores police.

For his defense, Shaholli is claiming insanity at the time of the shooting . He is backed by one psychiatrist, while multiple state mental experts say he was not insane.

Shaholli initially upon his arrest was found to be incompetent to stand trial but a short time later a state expert said he had regained competency, and Judge Mark Fratarcangeli of 40th District Court in St. Clair Shores agreed nearly a year later. Chrzanowski, a circuit court judge, more recently also found him mentally competent and said he is faking incompetency.

Multiple state experts also have said Shaholli is “malingering,” trying to pretend he is mentally ill or insane.

For the trial in the Mount Clemens courthouse, Fox and Barkovic can discuss the proceedings surrounding his the findings of experts and judges related to his competency. But Barkovic cannot raise Shaholli’s case in Probate Court in which a judge declared he was incompetent and appointed him a guardian and conservator.

Barkovic also repeated arguments that he made in district court that his client is not being treated within compliance of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But the judge disagreed.

At the start of proceedings Tuesday morning, Chrzanowski ordered Barkovic confined to the jail cell behind her courtroom for 20 to 30 minutes after Barkovic continued to try to discuss his conflicting cases that day, what the judge called his “personal problems.” Chrzanowski said she wanted him to focus on the issues of the case.